On the Edge of the War Zone Part 3

October 10, 1914

Amelie and I went up to Paris day before yesterday, for the first time since the battle,--you see everything here dates "before" and "after"

the battle, and will for a long time.

Trains had been running between Paris and Meaux for ten days, and will soon go as far as Chalons, where the Etat-Major was the last time we heard of it. Isn't that pretty quick work? And with three big bridges to build? But the army needed the road, and the engineers were at work five days after the battle.

There are but few trains--none yet on our branch road--so we had to go to Esbly. It took two hours to get to Paris--hardly more than twelve miles. We simply crawled most of the way. We crept through the tunnel this side of Lagny, and then stood on this side of the Marne, and whistled and shrieked a long time before we began to wiggle across the unfinished bridge, with workmen hanging up on the derricks and scaffoldings in all sorts of perilous positions, and all sorts of grotesque att.i.tudes. I was glad when we were over.

I found the town more normal than it was when I was there six weeks ago. If I had not seen it in those first days of the mobilization it would have seemed sadder than it did, and, by contrast, while it was not the Paris that you know, it was quiet and peaceful,--no excitement of any sort in the streets, practically no men anywhere. All the department shops were open, but few people were in them, and very little to sell.

Many of the small shops were closed, and will be, I imagine, until the end of the war. All the Austrian and German shops, and there were many of them, are, of course, closed for good, making wide s.p.a.ces of closed shutters in the Avenue de l'Opera and the rue de la Paix, and the rue Scribe, where so many of the steamship offices are. That, and the lack of omnibuses and tramways and the scarcity of cabs, makes the once brilliant and active quarter look quite unnatural. However, it gives one a chance to see how really handsome it is.

A great many of the most fashionable hotels are turned to hospitals, and everywhere, especially along the Champs-Elysees, the flags of the Red Cross float over once gay resorts, while big white bunting signs extend across almost every other facade, carrying the name and number of a hospital.

Every sort of business is running short-handed, and no big office or bank is open between the hours of noon and two o'clock.

I saw no one--there was no one to see. I finished the little business I had to do and then I went back to the station and sat on the terrace of the cafe opposite, and, for an hour, I watched the soldiers going in at one gate, and the public--Indian file--presenting its papers at another.

No carriages can enter the courtyard. No one can carry anything but hand luggage, and porters are not allowed to pa.s.s the gates, so one had to carry one's bundles one's self across the wide, paved court.

However, it is less trying to do this than it was in other days, as one runs no risk from flying motor-cabs.

We did not leave Paris until six--it was already dark--and there were few lights along the road. The Germans would love to destroy this road, which is on the direct line to the front, but I cannot imagine a bomb from an aeroplane reaching it at night, except by accident.

By the way, the att.i.tude of the public towards these war airships is queer. It seems a great deal more curiosity than fear. I had heard this stated, and I had a chance to see it exemplified. Just as Amelie and I were stumbling in the dusk over the rough pavement of the court, we heard an aeroplane overhead. Everyone stopped short and looked up. Some fool called "Une Taube--une Taube!" People already inside the station turned and ran back to see. Of course, it wasn't a Taube.

Still, the fact that someone said it was, and that everyone ran out to look up at it, was significant, as I am sure they would have done just the same if it had really been a German machine.

We came back even more slowly than we had gone up. It took ten minutes by my watch to cross the bridge at Chalifere. We jigged a bit and stopped; staggered a bit, and trembled, and stopped; crawled a bit, and whistled. I had a feeling that if anyone disobeyed the order pasted on every window, and leaned out, we should topple over into the stream. Still, no one seemed to mind. With the curtains drawn, everyone tried to read, by the dim light, a newspaper. It is remarkable how even ordinary people face danger if a panic can be prevented.

The really great person is the one who even in a panic does not lose his head, and the next best thing to not being feazed at danger is, I believe, to be literally paralyzed. Total immobility often pa.s.ses for pluck.

It was nearly half past eight when we reached Esbly; the town was absolutely dark. Pere was there with the donkey cart, and it took nearly an hour and a half to climb the hill to Huiry. It was pitch dark, and oh, so cold! Both Conde and Voisins, as well as Esbly, had street lamps--gas--before the war, but it was cut off when mobilization began, and so the road was black. This ordinary voyage seemed like journeying in a wilderness, and I was as tired as if I had been to London, which I take to be the hardest trip for the time it consumes that I know. I used to go to London in seven hours, and this trip to Paris and back had taken four hours and a half by train and three by carriage.

I found your letter dated September 25--in reply to my first one mailed after the battle. I am shocked to hear that I was spectacular. I did not mean to be. I apologize. Please imagine me very red in the face and feeling a little bit silly. I should not mind your looking on me as a heroine and all those other names you throw at me if I had had time to flee along the roads with all I could save of my home on my back, as I saw thousands doing.

But I cannot pick up your bouquets, considering that all I had to do was "sit tight" for a few days, and watch--at a safe distance--a battle sweep back. All you must say about that is "she did have luck." That's what I say every day.

As our railway communication is to be cut again, I am hurrying this off, not knowing when I can send another. But as you see, I have no news to write--just words to remind you of me, and say that all is well with me in this world where it is so ill for many.

V

November 7, 1914

IT was not until I got out my letter-book this morning that I realized that I had let three weeks go by without writing to you. I have no excuse to offer, unless the suspense of the war may pa.s.s as one.

We have settled down to a long war, and though we have settled down with hope, I can tell you every day demands its courage.

The fall of Antwerp was accepted as inevitable, but it gave us all a sad day. It was no use to write you things of that sort. You, I presume, do not need to be told, although you are so far away, that for me, personally, it could only increase the grief I felt that Washington had not made the protest I expected when the Belgian frontier was crossed. It would have been only a moral effort, but it would have been a blow between the eyes for the nervous Germans.

All the words we get from the front tell us that the boys are standing the winter in the trenches very well. They've simply got to--that is all there is to that.

Amelie is more astonished than I am. When she first realized that they had got to stay out there in the rain and the mud and the cold, she just gasped out that they never would stand it.

I asked her what they would do then--lie down and let the Germans ride over them? Her only reply was that they would all die. It is hard for her to realize yet the resistance of her own race.

I am realizing in several ways, in a small sense, what the men are enduring. I take my bit of daily exercise walking round my garden. I always have to carry a trowel in my sweater pocket, and I stop every ten steps to dig the cakes of mud off my sabots. I take up a good bit of my landed property at every step. So I can guess, at least, what it must be out in the trenches. This highly cultivated, well-fertilized French soil has its inconveniences in a country where the ground rarely freezes as it does in New England.

Also I am very cold.

When I came out here I found that the coal dealer was willing to deliver coal to me once a week. I had a long, covered box along the wall of the kitchen which held an ample supply of coal for the week.

The system had two advantages--it enabled me to do my trading in the commune, which I liked, and it relieved Amelie from having to carry heavy hods of coal in all weathers from the grange outside. But, alas, the railroad communications being cut--no coal! I had big wood enough to take me through the first weeks, and have some still, but it will hardly last me to Christmas--nor does the open fire heat the house as the salamandre did. But it is wartime, and I must not complain--yet.

You accuse me in your last letter of being flippant in what seems to you tragic circ.u.mstances. I am sorry that I make that impression on you. I am not a bit flippant. I can only advise you to come over here, and live a little in this atmosphere, and see how you would feel. I am afraid that no amount of imagining what one will or will not do prepares one to know what one will really do face to face with such actualities as I live amongst. I must confess that had I had anyone dear to me here, anyone for whose safety or moral courage I was--or imagined I was--responsible (for, after all, we are responsible for no one), my frame of mind and perhaps my acts might have been different. I don't know. Why, none of the men that i see have the air of feeling they are heroes--they just seem to think of it all as if it were merely "in the day's work."

For example, do you remember that handsome younger brother of my sculptor friend--the English boy who was in the heavy artillery, and had been in China and North Nigeria with Sir Frederick Ludgard as an aide-de-camp, and finally as a.s.sistant governor general? Well, he was with the first division of the British Expedition which landed in France in the middle of August. He made all that long, hard retreat from Belgium to the Marne, and was in the terrible Battle of the Rivers. I am enclosing a letter I have just received from him, because I think it very characteristic. Besides, if you remember him, I am sure that it will interest you. I don't know where it is from--they are not allowed to tell. It came, as army letters do, without any stamp--the carriage is free--with the round red stamp of the censor, a crown in the middle, and the words "Pa.s.sed by the Censor," and the number printed around it. Here it is:

My dearest M-

October 30, 1914

Last night I heard your account of your experiences between September 1 and 9, and it made me boil anew with disappointment that my attempts to reach Huiry on September 4 were frustrated. I was disappointed enough at the time, but then my regret was tempered by the thought that you were probably safe in Paris, and I should only find an empty house at La Creste. Now that I know that I should have found you--you!!!--it makes me wild, even after this interval of time, to have missed a sight of you. Now let me tell you how it came about that you nearly received a visit from me.

I left England August 17, with the 48th Heavy Battery (3d division).

We landed at Rouen, and went by train, via Amiens, to Houtmont, a few kilometres west of Mauberge. There we detrained one morning at two o'clock, marched through Malplaquet into Belgium, and came in contact with the enemy at once.

The story of the English retreat must be familiar to you by now. It was a wonderful experience. I am glad to have gone through it, though I am not anxious to undergo such a time again. We crossed the Marne at Meaux, on September 3, marching due east to Signy-Signets.

Funnily enough it was not until I had actually crossed the Marne that I suddenly realized that I was in your vicinity. Our route, unfortunately, led right away from you, and I could not ask to get away while we were actually on the march, and possibly going many miles in another direction. The following day, however--the 4th--we retraced our steps somewhat, and halted to bivouac a short distance west of a village named La Haute Maison--roughly about six miles from you. I immediately asked permission to ride over to Huiry. The Major, with much regret, declined to let me leave, and, since we received orders to march again an hour later, he was right. We marched all that night.

I have marked out our road with arrows on the little map enclosed.

We reached a place called Fontenay about 8.30 the next morning, by which time I was twenty miles from you, and not in a condition to want anything but sleep and food. That was our farthest point south. But, sad to say, in our advance we went by a road farther east, and quite out of reach of you, and crossed the Marne at a place called Nanteuil.

I got your first letter about one day's march south of Mons.

Best love, dearest M------. Write again.

Isn't that a calm way to state such a trying experience as that retreat?

It is only a sample of a soldier's letter.

If he were disappointed you can imagine that I was. Luckily I had seen him in June, when he was here on a visit, having just returned from North Nigeria, after five years in the civil service, to take up his grade in the army, little dreaming there was to be a war at once.

If he had come that afternoon imagine what I should have felt to see him ride down by the picket at the gate. He would have found me pouring tea for Captain Edwards of the Bedfords. It would have surely added a touch of reality to the battle of the next days. Of course I knew he was somewhere out there, but to have seen him actually riding away to it would have been different. Yet it might not, for I am sure his conversation would have been as calm as his letters, and they read as much as if he were taking an exciting pleasure trip, with interesting risks thrown in, as anything else. That is so English. On some future day I suppose we shall sit together on the lawn--he will probably lie on it--and swap wonderful stories, for I am going to be one of the veterans of this war.

I must own that when I read the letter I found it suggestive of the days that are gone. Imagine marching through Malplaquet and over all that West Flanders country with its memories of Marlborough, and where, had the Dutch left the Duke a free hand, he would have marched on Paris--with other Allies--as he did on Lille. I must own that history, with its records of bitter enemies yesterday, bosom friends today, does not inspire one with much hope of seeing the dreamer's vision of universal peace realized.